To Michael’s great shock, she hits him with a belt, and then bursts into tears, because he left with no explanation. However, when she returns, she is furious. One morning, Michael decides to get Hanna breakfast before she wakes up and leaves a note. On their vacation, they begin their days making love and spend the rest of the day cycling. Hanna leaves all the logistics to Michael, who orders food from menus, registers them as mother and son at the inns, and plans their route on his maps. Later, when Hanna becomes interested in Michael’s studies, she makes his reading aloud to her a condition for sex, and their routine soon incorporates reading before their shower.ĭuring his Easter vacation, Michael plans a bicycle trip for the two of them. The two then begin a continuing affair, including this ritual of showering and sex. Hanna runs a bath for him and seduces him. He does so but returns covered in coal dust after accidentally dislodging a pile of coal. To his delight Hanna is not annoyed with him and merely asks him to fetch some coal from the cellar. However, a few days later, he visits Hanna’s apartment again, intending to apologize. Embarrassed to be caught, he flees and later is plagued with guilt for fantasizing about her. Months later, after urging from his mother, Michael returns to the woman’s apartment in order to thank her, but as the woman is preparing to walk him out, he finds himself unable to stop watching her get dressed. One of the building’s tenants, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz rescues him, cleaning him up and bringing him back home, where his doctor diagnoses him with hepatitis. In Part 1, a 15-year-old Michael is on his way home when he becomes violently ill by the side of a building. ‘A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction.The narrator, Michael Berg, tells the story of his teenage affair with a former Nazi prison guard and its aftermath. But then suddenly, and terribly, it does – Hanna is not only obliged to answer for a horrible crime, she is also desperately concealing an even deeper secret. Much about her behaviour during the trial does not make sense. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the person in the dock is Hanna. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. An international bestseller.įor 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. An exceptionally powerful novel exploring the themes of betrayal, guilt and memory against the background of the Holocaust.

The reader book by bernhard schlink